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El Mercurio |
By Juan Antonio Muñoz Herrera |
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Konzert, 19. Mai 2018, London, Barbican Hall |
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A concert that is already a legend
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Jonas Kaufmann strives to contribute his inner world to the sense of the
works he interprets; that is why he is an artist and not just a singer. It
was a magnificent opportunity to attend his first live performance of
Richard Strauss’ “Vier letzte Lieder”; an adventure that involved many
risks, especially because the scores have been preferably tackled by
sopranos. But risks are challenges for the German tenor, as he has already
shown with the “Wesendonck Lieder” (Wagner) and by assuming the two voices
of the “Das Lied von der Erde” (Mahler).
This concert, held on May
19 at the London Barbican Centre, has the mark of a legend. No one will be
able to forget what they experienced that night.
The “Vier letzte
Lieder” (posthumous premiere in 1950) were composed for a high voice, but
not specifically for a female voice, and have been a vehicle of vocal
material and expressive intention for sopranos as diverse as Kirsten
Flagstad, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Sylvia Sass,
Kiri Te Kanawa and Anna Netrebko, among many others. Some men have already
approached them, such as the German tenor René Kollo, who recorded “Im
Abendrot”, the Lied that closes the cycle, conducted by Christian
Thielemann, and baritone Konrad Jarnot, who recorded the four songs with
Helmut Deutsch on the piano. Now the great German tenor offers his profound
and incisive interpretation of the scores with the BBC Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Jochen Rieder.
The art of Jonas Kaufmann is that of an
intimate expressive surrender; a song from the depth of his being, erected
on an absolute control of the emotional voltage, which he doses and
administers with almost religious care. He has a supernatural ability to
communicate in a confidential manner the subtleties of a musical language
whose life is a melismatic journey through words and syllables involved in
variations of tone, almost imperceptible accents and highly complex phrasing
rhythms. A musical fabric that, in the case of the “Vier letzte Lieder”,
deeply moves the listener. And a vocal test which is only possible for a
master, due to the dense orchestration which puts to the test the central
register and also the demanding score and the total control of the song
line, an essential condition to achieve flow without losing the position
through this undulating Straussian road.
Jonas Kaufmann seems to
observe that these scores contain that lunar recovery of the emotional life
that is sung in “Salomé”, with the mystery of death competing with the
mystery of love, and that there also lives in them the elegiac recognition
of Orestes (“Elektra”). They also contain a visit to that open and
attractive mausoleum where Wagner left his lovers (“Mild und leise”).
For some, this cycle represents the “Decline of Romanticism”, but Jonas
Kaufmann’s interpretation tells us that it is rather the absolute
confirmation of everything that Romanticism implied, exposed through a
contemplative state of calm and hope when seeing the passage of time and
sensing death. The way he approached the “wide and silent peace” (O weiter,
stiller Friede!) was breathtaking, the tiredness at the end of the way, the
images of sunset and the enormous question with which the cycle ends: “Is
this, perhaps, death?” (¿Ist dies etwa der Tod?), not to mention what he was
able to do with the fourth song, “Im Abendrot”, the only one with
Eichendorff’s text.
To listen to Jonas Kaufmann in these works is to
understand Richard Strauss at his 84 years and also to understand and know
the tenor himself. His is a look that attends to the mysterious and
ineffable path proposed by transitoriness and the step towards another
state. In his voice, death is really almost a coda, because what really
matters is the road; especially, the last part of it: a garden that withers
(the aging man), the departure of summer (the confirmation that vigorous
youth ends), the longing for rest (to sleep one night or all nights). There
is a cry to the desire for silence and “Beim Schlafengehen” he refers to it
when the voice is silent. Kaufmann knows that the sound contains that
silence, that the silence is rest and that it is perhaps there where the
music finally takes place.
In “Frühling”, the tenor emphasizes that
melody that seems to have no end. Although it has a Brahmsian character,
Wagner also emerges with his more extensive works after the infinity that
Strauss did manage to synthesize. From the beginning, the music swells and
surges from the unwanted winter garden, which Kaufmann describes with his
dark voice, letting us see “the crepuscular grotto” where “I long dreamed
/your trees, your blue airs / your smells and the song of your birds” (In
dämmrigen Grüften / träumte ich lang / von deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften /
Von deinem Duft und Vogelsang”). And there also the encounter: “You
recognize me again / you sweetly attract me, / my limbs tremble / with your
blessed presence” (Du kennst mich wieder, du lockst mich zart,/ Es zittert
durch all meine Glieder / Deine selige Gegenwart!).
In “September”,
together with Hesse, he will talk to us about autumn and decline, with
summer dying with the first rain. Here the trip is from major to minor tone,
through the agonizing dream of the garden. “Beim Schlafengehen” —with an
orchestral increase of winds and metals, and the celesta instead of the
harp— is perhaps the most moving song of the cycle and the tenor projects it
as does the soul that wants to rise, but sleep overcomes it, and the soul
rises.... and sleep overcomes it… Here is where the trio of “Der
Rosenkavalier” resonates, because the theme of farewell, of ending and
destiny links both works: a real shudder ran through the Barbican when the
artist said “to live deeply and intensely in the magic circle of the night”
(Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht / Tief und tausendfach zu leben).
Finally, “Im Abendrot” is the receptacle of everything: of the best of
Richard Strauss, of the Johannes Brahms of the German Requiem, of Bayreuth,
of what it is to die, of the mystery of living. This Lied is a sort of
mourning epilogue for the young “Death and Transfiguration” (1890), also
quoted. It is impossible not to remember Brahms “Von ewiger Liebe” (“Of
eternal love”), with the words of Wentzig dissolving in the darkness of the
woods and fields, when “even the skylark is silent”. Or “Auf dem Kirchhofe”
(“In the cemetery”), with the description of that day “filled with rain and
storm” and those tombs that had written on them the words “we were”.
That is why the only encore that Jonas Kaufmann gave after this night of
legend was “Morgen!” (“Tomorrow”), perhaps Strauss’ most endearing song
which tells us, peacefully, that one day we, the blessed, will meet again,
“in the bosom of this land that breathes the light of the sun”, and that
“the mute silence of happiness will descend upon us”.
The BBC
Orchestra was admirably conducted by Jochen Rieder, who knows Kaufmann and
breathes together with him, something absolutely essential in a repertoire
such as this one. The program began with Erich Korngold´s impressive in
inventiveness and resources “Schauspiel Overture” (1911), composed when he
was 14 years old. Strauss’ “Intermezzo” served as prelude for the four first
Lieder, with Kaufmann in his element. An awe-inspiring “Ruhe meine Seele”
opened fire, followed by “Freundliche Vision”, with the tenor reaching the
summit in the phrases “Der voll Schönheit wartet, dass wir kommen” (In which
peace awaits our arrival, full of beauty) and “Und ich geh’ mit Einer, der
mich lieb hat” (And I walk with someone who loves me). In “Befreit”, that
liberation at the time of dying-loving-possessing, Kaufmann’s voice became a
thread of the time when saying “Geb’ich dir Blick und Kuss zurück” (I will
return your look and your kiss) and “Dann wirst du mir noch im Traum
erscheinen und mich segnen und mit wir weinen” (Then I will only see you in
sleeping love, and you will bless me and cry with me). “Heimliche
Aufforderung” was the perfect “Secret Invitation” for the great vocal
display. Before the “Vier letzte Lieder”, Rieder and the BBC Symphony
Orchestra performed the perhaps somewhat lengthy Elgar’s “In the South”:
maybe we should give it another chance since this could have been due to our
impatience to return to Strauss and Kaufmann.
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